absurd (fwd)

1998-03-17 Thread hoov
forwarded by Michael Hoover > IBM's board of directors thanked chairman and CEO Louis Gerstner for > restoring Wall Street's faith in the company with a $4.5 million bonus > and stock options in 1997, according to a financial statement filed > Monday. > > Last year's bonus marks a 38 percent inc

Re: UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread PJM0930
In a message dated 98-03-17 05:07:29 EST, you write: << definitely was going to sink? However, if you consult the archives of Marxism-International, you will see that the alternatives are what we talk about all the time. M >> Good, I am glad someone has it all worked out then.

Re: Per Capita GDP Trends

1998-03-17 Thread Anthony D'costa
But the subtext, Dennis, is that there is ONE capitalist world-system and analysis has to BEGIN WITH the totality, and that MARXIST problematic immediately factors out the relevance of your obsession with nation-states, national competitiveness and other sub-spenglerian themes. >What gibberish-

Re: PPP and QLI

1998-03-17 Thread James Devine
At 05:36 p.m. 3/17/98 -0500, Barkley wrote: >Jim, > My only disagreement is when you say that PPP measures >long-run power. PPP generally shows poorer countries not >as far behind richer countries as do official GDP stats. I was referring to the fact that the actual exchange rates fluctu

Re: Marxism and the Indians of Peru, part 2 of 3

1998-03-17 Thread Mark Jones
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: > Alternative? For the Latin American left today this type of > revolutionary politics has long been discredited. Che may still be > respected but his strategy is not. Have you not heard the term "new > social movements"? > > ricardo Unfortunately the Latin American Lef

Re: social-democratic illusions/ was UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread Mark Jones
You need a long spoon to sup with the IBRD, it's true. However, propaganda which relies upon publicly abandoning the most significant indicator of market-driven progress is pretty double-edged. It's tacitly abandoning the capitalist dream altogether. Doug, do you know any insiders at Schroder

Re: Per Capita GDP Trends

1998-03-17 Thread john gulick
At 10:13 PM 3/17/98 +0800, Anthony D'Costa wrote: >What gibberish--the world-system with a hyphen is an obsession of those >Wallersteininian folks. Since when has nation states vanished and therefore >national competitiveness? It is premature to write off the state. Regardless of whether you're

Re: Pie in the Sky

1998-03-17 Thread valis
Quoth Dennis, following a nearly unsolicited confession: > Speaking of the devil, Warren Buffet recently turned bullish, a sure sign > of imminent market doom. Anyone want to bet when the business cycle is > going to turn? My crystal ball sez, it's already started, only in Asia > instead of Cali

Re: Marxism and the Indians of Peru, part 2 of 3

1998-03-17 Thread Mark Jones
This is a great piece of work by Lou Proyect, and great to see Barbara Bradby cited. She and I were friends years ago and there weren't many Irish pubs in north London we didn't sink a Guinness or two. She was a great fiddle player, as well as an outstanding Marxist anthropologist. She spent much

Re: PPP and QLI

1998-03-17 Thread Rosser Jr, John Barkley
Jim, My only disagreement is when you say that PPP measures long-run power. PPP generally shows poorer countries not as far behind richer countries as do official GDP stats. But that is because of the non-marketed component. But as you yourself noted, the GDP component reflects exchang

Pie in the Sky

1998-03-17 Thread Dennis R Redmond
On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Mark Jones wrote: > Dennis, what actually ARE your politics? Oh, I'm a Marxist who swears allegiance to the Transitional Program of Grouchoism, whose main principle is that the first act of the revolution will be a mass pie-in at all the boardrooms and corporate offices at W

BLS Daily Report

1998-03-17 Thread Richardson_D
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1998: Energy prices continued their nose dive in February, helping to eliminate inflation at the wholesale level as measured by the Producer Price Index for Finished Goods, which fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1 percent for the month, BLS reported (Daily Labor R

Re: Marxism and the Indians of Peru, part 2 of 3

1998-03-17 Thread Ricardo Duchesne
> Date sent: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 18:56:33 + > Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Copies to: [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject:Re: Marxism and the Indians of Peru,

GNP and PPP and QLI and HDI and ISEW and ...

1998-03-17 Thread Thomas Kruse
Funny that no one should mention the UNDPs HDI (or did I miss it?). The Human Develpoment Indicator comes up with a 0 to 1 figure, based on indicators of health, income and eduaction. Health is a composite of infant mortality, life expectancy, etc.; income is PPP'd; while literacy and schooling

Re: PPP and QLI

1998-03-17 Thread Rosser Jr, John Barkley
I fully agree with Doug and said so up front that there are all kinds of problems in measuring these. He gave some good examples why. What is now HDI used to be called QLI. Sorry for the confusion. BTW, compared to Denmark, etc. another reason the US looks better on PPP than G

Re: social-democratic illusions/ was UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread Doug Henwood
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: > Would you say the same critical things about the UN's >Quality of Life Index (QLI)? BTW, those have generally >shown pretty good conditions for officially socialist >countries. Cuba does pretty well compared with other Latin >American nations. They even had

Re: PPP and QLI

1998-03-17 Thread Doug Henwood
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: >Although Doug Henwood has said that >PPP overstates living standards in poor countries. >Probably not so. I didn't say that. I said using PPP shrinks the apparent income gap between rich and poor countries, which is of some ideological use to the capitalist oinker

Re: social-democratic illusions/ was UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread Rosser Jr, John Barkley
Doug, Would you say the same critical things about the UN's Quality of Life Index (QLI)? BTW, those have generally shown pretty good conditions for officially socialist countries. Cuba does pretty well compared with other Latin American nations. They even had North Korea about even wi

Re: social-democratic illusions/ was UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread Doug Henwood
Mark Jones wrote: >The fact is that GDP does not correlate in any definite way to welfare. >Even the World Bank recognises this, since it doesn't rely on GDP figures any >more as an idnex of client welfare. The trend to replace GDP with GPI (Genuine >Progress Indicator) ... You've got to be car

Re: PPP and QLI

1998-03-17 Thread James Devine
The bottom line, in my book at least, is that measures of the quality of life (QLI) are efforts to gauge use-value, while measures of GDP, whether deflated using a price index, the current exchange rate, or the PPP exchange rate, are measures of exchange-value. Under capitalism, it is the latter

PPP and QLI

1998-03-17 Thread Rosser Jr, John Barkley
It is much more useful to look at PPP measures of per capita GDP rather than just per capita GDP, although they remain very imperfect. Although Doug Henwood has said that PPP overstates living standards in poor countries. Probably not so. Ask yourself if someone could actually live i

Re: social-democratic illusions/ was UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread Anthony D'costa
One of my reservations about the PPP technique is that I'm convinced that the IMF and such use it to make global comparisons less embarrassing. Zimbabwe's PPP at $2,030 sounds a lot better than its cash income at $540 (World Bank figures). Even so, Zim's PPP income was 8.6% of the US's in 1987, an

Re: Per Capita GDP Trends

1998-03-17 Thread Mark Jones
Dennis R Redmond wrote: > Mark, I hate to break the news to you, but in 1990 a little thing called the > Berlin Wall was bulldozed by, well, some revolutionaries. Germany's > 11% unemployment is due to the collapse of the GDR economy; unemployment > is 18% and higher in the ex-GDR, and many of th

Re: UK Decay

1998-03-17 Thread Mark Jones
I know this is going to sound hackneyed, but isn't 'And your alternative?' more or less what Ismay asked the captain when told the Titanic definitely was going to sink? However, if you consult the archives of Marxism-International, you will see that the alternatives are what we talk about all the